Apostolicity as God's gift in the Life of the Church U.S. Theological Consultation, 1986

1. In the creed we confess the Church to
be "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic." What is
meant by this term? Modern scholarship, reflected in many
joint and common statements of the ecumenical dialogue, has
advanced discussion of this question in several important
areas. For example, historical-critical study of the Bible
has called attention to the ways in which the word apostolos
is used in the New Testament as well as to the distinctive
role of the Twelve and to the place of Peter in the New Testament.
So also, historians of doctrine have called attention to the
importance of the struggle against gnosticism in the second
century for the development of the concept of apostolic succession.

2. In 1985 the North American Orthodox/Roman
Catholic Bilateral Consultation took up the study of apostolicity.
Our papers and discussions prompted the following reflections,
which we offer now particularly with the hope that they will
help to advance the work of the International Orthodox/Roman
Catholic Consultation as it moves forward in its own discussion
of apostolicity.

3. It is not our intention simply to repeat
or even to summarize the many scholarly foundational studies
on apostolicity, though at times we shall call attention to
points raised in them. Rather, we wish to examine certain
other aspects of this subject, for we are convinced that,
as Orthodox and Roman Catholics, we share a perception of
apostolicity and of its implications for church structures
which in some sense has united us even during periods of mutual
antagonism. By trying to articulate this shared perception,
we hope to carry our own discussion of apostolicity beyond
the points of agreement convergence already reached by others
involved in ecumenical dialogue.

4. Biblical scholarship has drawn our attention
to the fact that the New Testament understanding of apostolicity
is not so one-dimensional as both our traditions have sometimes
appeared to presume. The differing theological emphases found
there--St. Paul's claim to apostolic title or the tendency
in Luke-Acts to identify the apostles with the Twelve--suggest
that there is a continuing need for theological reflection
on apostolicity, a task to which we today are also called.

5. In biblical language apostles are those
who have been sent out to perform a task in the name of another.
They are endowed with the authority and freedom to act authentically
on behalf of the one who sent them. Apostles in the New Testament
are witnesses to the risen Christ who are explicitly commissioned
by him to spread the gospel of his resurrection to the world
and to promote, in his name, the active presence and power
of God's kingdom. We call the Church apostolic first of all
because the Church continues to share this mission in history,
continues to be authorized by the risen Lord, through its
continuing structures, as his legitimate representative.

6. For Orthodox and Roman Catholics, therefore,
that the Church is apostolic is not simply a statement but
an object of faith. The creed says "I believe one holy,
catholic and apostolic church." Like the Christ-event,
this apostolicity is a gift from God given once for all; its
content is not of our making. As biblical scholars have observed,
the apostles were unique and irreplaceable in their witness
to God's decisive intervention in human history. At the same
time, this apostolic gift has an eschatological dimension,
particularly--but not exclusively--when the Twelve are identified
as apostles. The apostle appears as a uniquely authoritative
figure not only at the foundation of the Church but also as
a companion of the eschatological Christ at the judgment of
the last day. This eschatological dimension does not only
mean that the Church, founded on the Twelve, awaits its perfect
form at the end of God's plan for history. It also means that
the Church shares now in the finality, the irrevocable fullness,
of God's action within the changes of history, precisely because
the Twelve have passed on to the Church their witness to the
presence of God's kingdom in the risen Lord and their role
as authoritative heralds of his coming in history.

7. These two dimensions of apostolicity--the
historical and the eschatological--cannot be separated, and
certainly in our lived experience as Orthodox and Roman Catholics
they have always been held together. Indeed, one of the characteristics
of God's gift of apostolicity is that it manifests the events
of the end to the present time. This is seen clearly in the
pattern of the eucharist, where the Holy Spirit brings the
reality of the resurrected Christ to the Church, and it is
visible also in the tradition of iconography, which brings
to bear upon the present life of the Church both the historical
past and the power of the world to come. Apostolicity thus
is not reduced to simple reference to the past, nor is it
referred only to the reality of a future age. It means that
here and now the life of the Church-- whether expressed in
authoritative teaching, in judgment and discipline, or in
the eucharist itself--is being molded, corrected, and governed
by what has been received from the past and by what is awaited
at the last day.

8. We frequently speak of our faith as
apostolic, by this usually stressing that its content has
been received from the apostles. This understanding of the
apostolic faith took on particular importance in the Church's
struggle against gnosticism in the second century, when it
came to be described as a deposit left by the apostles and
handed down with the communities founded by them. But there
has never been any need to understand this deposit as an inert
object, relayed in purely mechanical fashion from generation
to generation by duly authorized ministers. Rather, it remains
a living confession. We see the paradigm of this in Peter's
response to Christ's question, "Who do men say that I
am?...Who do you say that I am?" The apostolic faith
of Peter appears not only in the content of the confession--"Thou
art the Christ, the son of the living God"--but also
in the very act of confessing.

9. It is primordially within the mystery
of Christian initiation that apostolicity is continually experienced
in the life of the Church and in the life of each Christian.
The baptismal act of receiving and giving back the Church's
confession of faith (traditio/redditio) marks each Christian's
entry into and appropriation of the apostolic life and faith
of the Church. As an essential element in the life of the
whole Church and of every Christian, apostolicity therefore
is by no means unique to or limited to the realm of hierarchical
ministry. For just as we share by baptism in the royal and
prophetic priesthood, so also by this baptismal confession
we too become bearers of the Church's apostolicity.

10. In our consultation attention was drawn
to at least two corollaries which may follow from this understanding
of apostolic faith: (a) the apostolicity of ministry is generally
seen as derived from the continuity of the community as a
whole in apostolic life and faith; the succession of ministers
in office is normally agreed to be subordinate to that ecclesial
apostolicity, (b) Apostolicity seems to consist more in fidelity
to the apostles' proclamation and mission than in any one
form of handing on community office. These observations alert
us once again to reducing apostolicity simply to forms and
institutional structures. Yet we also must resist any temptation
to locate apostolicity in what is merely individual or in
what falls outside the mediated nature of the divine economy--as
happened and still happens, for example, in the gnostic claim
to immediate experience. Apostolicity is experienced not in
a-temporal isolation but rather in the Church's social nature
as a community of faith and in its historical continuity and
permanence--even in concrete forms and patterns once given
the Church's life by its relation to the civilization of the
Greco-Roman world.

11. Within this social and historical experience
of the apostolic Church, how do we as Orthodox and Roman Catholics
conceive of those structures which attest to and assure the
unity of the churches in their apostolic confession? Here
historians have called attention to certain differences of
approach which may characterize our churches. Yet we are uncomfortable
with any assessment that would too sharply polarize differences,
as though at every point--even those on which at first glance
we would appear to be united--we were in fact divided by hopelessly
irreconcilable mentalities.

12. In the Eastern churches there has frequently
been an emphasis on the fullness of each church's apostolicity
and, indeed, "petrinity," and there has been criticism
of the Roman Church, for tending to localize these qualities
in a single see. The Roman Church, on the other hand, has
strongly emphasized the need to express the unity of the Church's
apostolic faith through concrete structures and practice and
has criticized the Eastern churches for losing sight of this
need. Such differences of approach should not, however, be
presented as evidence of an irreducible opposition between
"local church" and "universal church."
This dilemma is an artificial one which arises at least in
part when we are unwilling to see the same qualities present
in both the local and the universal, albeit realized in different
ways. The image of Peter within the apostolic college is reflected
in the life of each local church; it is also reflected in
the visible communion of all the local churches. There is
no intrinsic opposition between these two approaches.

13. In examining the Church's historical
relationship to civil society, scholars have also contrasted
a "principle of accommodation" in the East to a
"principle of apostolicity" in the West. Yet at
a time when East and West were united in one Christian Roman
Empire, neither approach necessarily excluded the other, for
both pointed and aspired to universality. It was in Rome after
all, the imperial capital, that Peter and Paul, "first
enthroned of the apostles, teachers of the oikumene,"
bore witness to the apostolic faith even until death. (Troparion
of the feast of SS. Peter and Paul in the Byzantine rite).
And in the East, it was not abstract principle of conformity
to civil structures that prevailed. Rather, the concrete structures
of a universal empire were used to express the Church's universality.
Also instructive here are ways in which the themes of diversity-
in-unity and ordered harmony are developed in the many Byzantine
treatises on the "pentarchy". What is envisioned
is by no means simply an institutional unity, but an organic
unity.

14. These points are offered in the hope
that they will clarify and facilitate our common approach
not only to the question of apostolicity but also to the question
of primacy. Taken together, they call us to exercise particular
caution in our use of theological language. When distinctions
have been made or noted-- as was done above, for example,
in distinguishing the content and the act of apostolic faith--we
must resist the temptation to leave them in a state of opposition.
Unless the distinguished elements are recombined in their
proper relationship and proportion, the integrity of the underlying
theological reality is lost and the spiritual experience of
this reality in both our traditions is travestied. There is
not need to claim that what may characterize one tradition
in a particular way exhausts the content of that tradition
or, in turn, must be absent from another tradition as a matter
of course.

15. The historical study of apostolicity
also calls us to examine carefully the ways in which we present
our respective histories. This has particular importance when
we are speaking of that historical continuity we each claim
as bearers of the apostolic faith, or when we recount those
particular incidents in our histories--for example, the monothelite
controversy in the seventh century--which may reflect different
understandings of apostolicity. In such contexts we can easily
forget the achievements of our common theological reflection
and retreat once again--consciously or unconsciously--into
what is less than the fullness of truth. We must not be too
quick to identify this kind of retreat with that fearless
confession of the apostolic faith "in season and out
of season" which binds us all as Orthodox and Catholic
Christians.